Rod Stewart look-alike dupes Chattanooga

Rod Stewart look-alike dupes Chattanooga

June 16th, 2012by Adam Poulisse in News

Singer Rod Stewart was spotted in Chattanooga on Thursday -- an incredible feat, since the man isn't even in the United States right now.

"Unless Chattanooga, Tennessee, is located 40 miles outside of London, that wasn't him," said Arnold Stiefel, Stewart's manager of nearly 30 years at Stiefel Entertainment. "Rod is with his family at an estate just outside of London. He's very visible somewhere else, and it's not in your city."

A Rod Stewart impersonator making rounds throughout the Scenic City pulled the wool over the eyes of area tourists, business owners and the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

One person duped by the doppelganger was Ruth Oehmig, who owns Cafe on the Corner on Lookout Mountain.

"There was no question in my mind that it was him. I shook his hand, I brought him another beer," Oehmig said after being informed that the man who introduced himself as Rod Stewart, and even posed for pictures with other lunching guests, was not the singer of "Maggie May," Oehmig's favorite song growing up.

"It was identical, absolutely identical," she said.

Cindy Roberts, the city clerk of Lookout Mountain, Ga., was at the restaurant and saw that "he had on that suit that you would imagine Rod Stewart wearing," she said, which included white Capezio shoes.

"'White Capezio shoes'? Yeah, right," Stiefel said. "People dress like what they think he dressed like 25 years ago, and they fool many people."

Chattanooga isn't the first city that has had a Rod Stewart impersonator, Stiefel said from Beverly Hills, Calif.

"I remember one time many years ago I had a call from [a] sheriff, and they said 'Do you know we have your client in a holding cell?' I said 'Really, then who is it I'm with now?'"

Knoxville residents Dale and Anita Newman, guests at the La Quinta Inn on West 21st Street, also were fooled into believing they were in the same hotel as Stewart.

A woman with the pseudo-Stewart asked Newman to hold the door open, and Dale Newman took a lengthy elevator ride with the man. He said he believed his elevator partner was Stewart, but the man would not confirm it.

It wasn't until Newman searched photos of Stewart online that he noticed small differences in facial features, indicating that it was not the famed rock star.

Nobody under the name Rod Stewart was checked into the La Quinta Inn as of Friday, according to hotel employees.